I’d exchange Reddit and X. The rate at which X is going downhill right now just cannot be beaten by anything.
Agreed. I mean I never expected Elon to be smart but good god is that dude an idiot. Everyone reading this could 100% do a better job in his shoes.
If I had bought Twitter back then, I would have just done absolutely nothing and raked in the cash.
That’s assuming that his goal is to run a profitable social media company that people respect, enjoy, and that makes profit. However, he’s loaded af and can easily pay for the best consultants in the world. Considering that, I think it’s possible that he might be reaching his goals, they’re just not what we assume they are.
I’ve seen varying levels of this general idea that Musk somehow is still playing some 4d chess and the downfall of twitter is the plan, but it’s really not. Twitter was already a niche generally. I only know like 2 people IRL who were on twitter, compared to basically everyone on Facebook, for example, and you can check the stats, twitter commanded way more mindspace than it actually had.
And even if the master plan was to kill twitter - so what? This won’t stop anything. There is an argument to be made that all of the journalists and what not coalesced over there, but that’s just not going to stop happening. It’s like if someone wanted to kill instant messaging. “HA HA ICQ, this time I’ve got you!” Except, it’s not the platform that’s important, and it’s easily replaced.
Even if Elon’s plan is “let’s federate” it’s still an inane way to do it, but this seems like a more likely outcome.
Hanlon again for the win, simplest answer is he’s not nearly as smart as anyone pretends.
Yeah the thing that people are upset about reddit for with rate limited apps is something twitter did years ago. Then theres the everything else involved on twitter and its not even close.
Came here to say this. X is doing worse than Reddit.
I feel like it’s unfair to include TikTok as it had a clear headstart by being a dumpster fire since the very start.
Musical.ly certainly was a thing.
Hey, the rebrand was successful!
Nobody associates it with paedos now and their “take existing videos and put our horrid moving shitty contrasted watermark on it” starting strat worked a dream
It has been an dumpster fire before it was even made.
And Vine!
I mean, TikTok was already bad to begin with but what did they do to deserve a spot next to Twitter? Did I miss something? Surely they can’t do worse than trying to make their paid only, right?
Yeah TikTok is bad but it also works as expected.
Yeah it’s the worst algorithm ever, basically spyware, bans LGBT+ people, etc. But that’s quite frankly how it always worked.
Bans LGBT+ people
My fyp is full of bipoc LGBTQ+ people? Twitter on the other hand tries to feed me right wing news sources and disinformation all the time. There’s a spectrum here and TikTok is far on the other side.
Also to be frank the algorithm is by far the best out of any company with a “for you” algorithm. It blows pretty much anything else out of the water entirely.
Go watch a few truck or bbq tik toks and watch it backslide. Anything that is vaguely a “manly hobby.” You’ll be surprised how quickly Ben Shapiro winds up in front of you.
I watch more tiktok than I’m proud of, and YouTube is actually way worse for this. Youtube I’ve actually started using some private browsing for things that I think might turn to Joe Rogan or whatever because on that platform you’re like 7 videos from “i’d like to check out some camping videos” to “here’s how to protect yourself from the woke mob in the apocalypse which will happen next Tuesday courtesy of Ben Shapiro.”
The thing that worries me about tiktok is they’re too good at this. It would honestly be extremely easy for them to tip the scales.
the internet media is famously skewed right, its a pure fact.
Totally. It’s just an invisible off ramp every few clicks
I have a friend who actively uses youtube for only audio books on literal marxism and they still give him ads for fucking prager U and shit
People rightfully call out TikTok as a spyware because of their ties with CCP, but how exactly are other social media giants and big tech any different as they too have ties with the CIA, FBI etc
Basically, most social media reads out everything that is openly accessible, like cookies, address books and contacts, etc.
TikTok goes deeper, it has been watched going into protected files, trying to break encryptions (sometimes being successful).You need to source things instead of just spewing bullshit you hear on the grapevine.
Damn, didn’t know about this, but, what if Big Tech has also been doing this, but with more perfection, without getting caught?
TikTok is big tech.
But your question is highly speculative and kind of comes across as bad faith.
how is it speculative that big tech steals your data. Google, Amazon, microsoft, every single big internet conglomerate sell your data. Its a fact, and is widely reported.
Don’t we have a different tiktok than the Chinese one? There are specifically US folks in charge of the non China Tiktok. Wasn’t one of the security heads a former US state security agent?
Why do you think it’s more spyware than any other big tech mobile app or social media?
And based on my experience getting hooked so fast into while I didn’t want to touch it, it seems it has the best algorithm. I’m off it now, like all other social media expect for fediverse, but I can testify on this
bans LGBT+ people
Source? because I follow a ton of LGBTQIA+ people without any issue.
follow someone long enough and eventually they complain that their videos are being taken down with zero reason, and being banned outright. an example is sanrioangel I think her name is, she’s had so many tiktok accounts banned for no reason other than being trans
just because they haven’t rolled out the jackboots doesnt mean they haven’t deployed some.
Idk, I find it’s algorithm very easy to control compared to every other social media, its much easy to manipulate. My fyp is full of gay people so idk what you mean by the second statement.
Needed three graphics.
Does this reflect how the platform is actually doing or do we just like the circlejerk of wishing they would fail? Because everything I’ve seen says Reddit has been completely unaffected by the changes made and they’re still getting more user signups, engagements and interaction/posts than ever.
Tik Tok also seems to be growing strong.
Twitter is a genuine laughing stalk and is pulling major shit…but everyone still seems to be using it regularly.
if you have been back to reddit, they might have growing numbers (probably due to shitty practices forcing you to use their app instead of mobile browser) etc. but the quality of discussions and the amount of bots just reposting the same comments skyrocketed.
I mean it’s a huge site, it won’t die, but if you look at it that way, Facebook is still alive, do you have a desire to spend time on that site though?
Pleased to say I haven’t been back to Reddit (except to scrub my entire history there to nuke my account). Reddit quality going completely down the toilet is something seen long before these changes were made. It’s really sad to see that companies aren’t forced to make better products because people will put time and money into these shit platforms regardless.
yeah I already noticed the downhill trend before the API changes but after it really went into a nosedive, expectedly the power users posting good shit just left, so rage bait reposts are the trending things.
I have been back to reddit to check things out from time to time. The quality has definitely degraded, and their changes to not seeing NSFW stuff without logging in or using their app has me visiting less and less.
The comment section is still nice, but I just don’t see the quality it once had.
We can take a look at the comment count on major subreddits over time. Using the top 5 most commented listed on Subreddit Stats, and then using Social Rise to see comments per day (go down to “Graph of” and click “comments”).
- https://social-rise.com/subreddit-analysis/askreddit
- https://social-rise.com/subreddit-analysis/AmItheAsshole
- https://social-rise.com/subreddit-analysis/Starfield
- https://social-rise.com/subreddit-analysis/AITAH
- https://social-rise.com/subreddit-analysis/NoStupidQuestions
All except Starfield show comments cratering at the beginning of July, and they’re not coming back. Obviously, Starfield is a special case given the release of the game. AITAH was also just starting to pick up and then had its jugular cut out. Across the board, there looks to be a 3 or 4 times reduction in comment rates.
Now, perhaps the site is still OK among the more niche subreddits. That’d take a lot longer to analyze. But it’s clear the big traffic drivers are not pulling people in anymore.
While I overall agree this seems to be the case at first glance, I do notice that august there’s a huge drop that correlates with school starting up again. Probably need to compare to previous summers.
Edit: looks like it’s still pretty huge even accounting for that
The graphs there go back to 2018. There aren’t drops anywhere close to what we’re seeing.
Good to know, i was having trouble on mobile with it. Thanks!
I’m glad I left that site. They just view us all as little addicts and have lost any semblance of caring about what made reddit work in the first place.
If popularity was all that mattered, McDonalds would have Michelin stars.
Only a good 0.1% of reddit actually “creates content” with the rest having only engagement via comments. A good 99% of those also don’t do anything but lurk.
The people that make the content are also the ones more likely to switch to alternatives.
It’s an engagement loop so while the amount of signups and accounts is unchanged, there is simply less content to keep people around and to monetize.
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I believe that s shifting the burden of proof.
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the burden of proof lays in the eye of the beholder or whatever the quote is. i’m not a lawyer.
The burden of proof lies in the eyes of the Christian god! And as a fellow Muslim, I can say nothing about it, but He might speak through me and say that Reddit became a place without much new content.
If I’m understanding the mythos correctly, those are the same god, so you’re covered.
I don’t save sources in case of future need for references. I haven’t written a thesis on the matter. It came up in a few articles in my tech news RSS feeds. You’re welcome to not believe me and I would readily consider contrary information anyone else offers it.
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Reddit is driven by search traffic and the results got a lot worse since a lot of good posters quit. They lost the content but not the users yet, I think it’s just going to take a long time before they truly see the damage in their traffic statistics!
The google-Reddit search got really screwed up when the private subs numbered 7-8000. I’m curious if there have been any lingering effects.
Yeah Reddit just became more like Facebook which is disappointing, but not a dumpster fire.
Twitter is a radioactive dumpster fire that’s spawning mutant fire rats. There’s really no comparison.
I just have a hard time believing this when the_donald started on reddit. The site has been an incubator for right wing actors for years. Even the infamous Stormfront recognized the opportunities for recruitment there years ago.
No, but we are on lemmy so we obviously don’t care how well billion dollar companies are doing profit wise.
I care insofar as seeing how badly they can screw up
Put Unity somewhere up there for their recent debacle
Unity is hors-concours, they’ve already won this race. None of these social networks have managed to fuck up so badly as to fully destroy their reputations like Unity did.
what happened to unity
They tried to apply a per install fee and make it retroactive for all games using the Unity Runtime. Meaning games made with Unity even a few years ago who didn’t agree to this would be charged each time someone uninstalls and reinstalls the game.
This is the second time they have tried to make retroactive changes, by the way, and they even deleted the part of the TOS that prevented retroactive changes.
It’s really just one of many things they have done in the last few years
To list out a lot of the many things: They’ve done forced RTO which is pretty internally disliked, fired a ton of people lately, a bit ago the CEO publicly said anyone who doesn’t prioritize monetization are “the biggest fucking idiots”, they bought an ad company known for making malware, and they keep getting in bed with military contracts including Lockheed. Oh and they cancelled their example project game Gigaya which I’m still bitter over
Just a minor correction, they actually merged with Iron Source, they didn’t just buy them. That means there was a good bit of board carry over, which means Iron Source management is now making decisions at Unity.
They won this is a fight for the 2nd seed
Crazy how TikTok don’t even seem so bad anymore thanks to the other two completely fucking imploding.
I think Twitter will be the largest fall.
Like, they went from publicly traded household name, used by news sites everywhere… to… well…
Elons shenanigans has to be worse than spez surely
Spez just copies what daddy Musk does, so give it some time
I know lemmy hates Reddit but X is easily taking the cake here. Do you think Elon is respecting ANY of the policies around old user data? If you were EVER on Twitter, Musk is all up in your business.
I hesitate to speak for everyone… Okay, now I will. As ex-Redditors, we absolutely hate Reddit because we knew it in the past, and we also know it now. So authoritatively, fuck Reddit and fuck Spez.
(I know not everyone here came from/cares about Reddit)
I don’t hate Reddit. I love what Reddit can be.
I just can’t support support its current trajectory. If they backpedaled settle of the recent decisions I’d return tomorrow, because after spending 3 months here I’ve found zero communities with enough activity to justify leaving the “everything” feed.
Same for me.
I hate reddit, but I always hated reddit, it was always a cesspool. back in the day before the recent admin drama it was really horribly bigoted, and when lots of people jumpped ship recently, the community got real racist real fast
I feel like unity is the most likely to die. Their users are way more likely to switch to an alternative than people using reddit
Unity alternatives are also way more known than reddit or twitter alternatives
Also, anyone who wanted to leave Twitter, Reddit, or TikTok likely already have
But the alternatives aren’t as developed. Godot still isn’t great for 3D projects and Unreal is Epic and also has royalty fees like Unity tried to add.
Unreal only has a 5% fee on games that made over 1 million USD
Unity wanted to add a 0.20 USD tax for every download after you made 200K USD 200K users(which changes depending on how many downloads your game has and which plan you are using)
Units pricing method could have been easily exploited, game developers would have to pay for people pirating their games, if a free to play game reached those requirments, it could cost them more than the game made, giveaways would cost game developers money and all unity games would have to collect data
No, I’m well aware that Unity’s model is fucked up.
I’m just saying that I don’t consider Unreal a valid alternative, especially as it’s owned by Epic who have shown themselves to be far worse than anything Unity has done already, and there are no other 3D engines as good as Unity. I called out Unreal also just because people are saying that Unity shouldn’t charge any fees as they think fees are unfair, but then happily recommend Unreal.
Not saying necessarily to keep using it, I’m just saying it’s not as simple of a solution as just switching for a lot of devs.
Indies yes but the big dick billion dollar in MTX mobile market won’t shift at all.
That text layout is…well dumpster fire is strong, but it’s definitely a smelly smolder
It’s just a wastebasket woopsie!
Xitter is now enabling disinformation intentionally. Put ‘em at the top
Well, Tiktok demotes china critical accounts and promotes china friendly ones, people who tried it came to the conclusion that’s it’s roughly by the factor 10 so they aren’t even hiding it!
Yeah i also completely forgot Unity. This “Worst Dumpster Fire” ladder only had 3 spots.
wtf is a Kia race
It’s a race in which there are only losers.
So do they all burn or implode in the end like the majority of KIAs?
A very easily stolen race, all you need is a USB stick
Rip a lil plastic…
Maybe it is Killed In Action?
Has to be.
The enshittification of TikTok: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
Very relevant to all of them
Great article!
